Cultural Attitude And Selection Of Translation Strategies

Even-Zohar's polysystem theory pushes the translation studies onto a new level and analyses the factors that influence the selection of translation strategies from the cultural and social perspective. According to polysystem theory, translated literature in a strong culture system assumes the secondary position, translators then tend to apply domesticating strategy, while in a weak culture, foreignizing strategy prevails. So the position of a given culture in the world cultural system and the position of the translated literature in this given culture play an important role in the selection of translation strategies. However, it seems some special phenomena cannot be explained by this theory, thus limitations also exist.The 3rd translation climax in China can be divided into two phases. The first phase begins from the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement;the second phase is from the May Fourth Movement to the 1930s. During the first phase, Chinese culture has undergone a turning point. According to polysystem theory, translated literature should have been in the central position and foreignization prevails. However, the real fact is that domestication became the prevailing translation strategy at that time. In the second phase, translated literature occupied the central position, however, foreignization and domestication coexisted at that time which is not consistent with the hypotheses polysytem theory assumes.Based on the historical and cultural background, this thesis puts forth the concept--- translators' cultural attitude. For translation strategies directly reflect translator's translating purpose, and translating purpose is determined by translators' cultural attitude, so we have to at the same time pay attention to translating purpose. And cultural attitude is mainly proposed from the macro-perspective, we need to differentiate the attitude and translation orientations of a social cultural group and its individuals,for Skopos theory emphasizes particularly on the individuals' purpose in cultural context, we use the translating purpose in Skopos theory for reference in analyzing the factors that influence translation strategies. Thus with the good combination of the micro and macro perspective, we can have a better and more all-sided view towards the phenomena in China in the 3rd translation climax. However, for we limit translating purpose to the subordinate concept of cultural attitude in this thesis, and cultural attitude finally determines translating purpose in the specific conditions in China, so in this thesis, translating purpose then considered one aspect of cultural attitude, thus we combine these two concepts into one—"cultural attitude" to analyze its influence on the selection of translation strategies.Therefore, the thesis points out one aspect of the limitation of polysystem theory— it only takes the objective cultural factors into consideration to analyze the factors that influence the translation strategies, but ignores translators' subjective cultural attitude. In fact, the position of a given culture and its translated literature is an objective fact as well as a subjective judgment. Therefore, can translators' selection of strategies be as polysystem theory concludes only when the position of the nation and its culture in reality agrees with that in people's thoughts, if not, things will be against that polysystem theory hypothesizes.